Friday, August 31, 2012

It's the end of the month and I hope that it was good one for everyone. This month I logged more than 20,000 airmiles as I was lucky enough to present at a number of schools and conferences. Thank you to all of my hosts. And thank you to all of you who continue to help Free Technology for Teachers grow. This month we almost reached 50,000 subscribers!

I've written about the collaborative task management tool Fetchnotes a couple of times this year (click here for my latest review). This week Fetchnotes announced a great promotion with Box. Now if you register for a Fetchnotes account and a new Box account, you will receive 25GB of free Box space. Since Dropbox dropped support for sharing of folders (for new accounts), Box has become my preferred file hosting and sharing service.

Applications for Education
This summer I got a great Box use idea from Greg Kulowiec. Greg recommended creating a public, shared folder on Box that you fill with important digital hand-outs for your students. Whenever you update the folder your students will automatically be able to access the new files that you have added to the folder. Sign-up for Fetchnotes, try out the task management tools, then enjoy 25GB of Box storage to use in a public, shared folder for your students.

We Want Apps is a free iPad and iPhone app for discovering new apps for kids. I discovered We Want Apps on David Kapuler's blog and immediately gave it a try on my iPad. With We Want Apps installed on your iPad you can search for apps according to the age of your students, the platform (iPhone or iPad), and price (free or paid). After choosing your search criteria you will be given a list of apps. Click on an app in the search results list to read a detailed description of that app.

You can use We Want Apps without registering. However, if you do register for a We Want Apps account you can bookmark and share your favorite apps. In addition to the search functions, you can also discover new apps by following the We Want Apps "App of the Day" feed.

Applications for Education
Just browsing the App store for educational apps for your students can be a time-consuming and occasionally frustrating process. We Want Apps could save you time and help you find apps that are suitable for your students to use on iPads in your classroom.

A+ Click is a free site full of online mathematics games for students at all grade levels. You can find games on A+ Click by selecting a grade level then selecting a topic. Alternatively, you select just a topic or just a grade level and browse through all of the games. Students do not need to register in order to play the games.

Applications for Education
If you're looking for some good practice activities for your students to use at home, A+ Click could be a good site to link to your classroom blog. Students receive instant feedback on every question. When students answer enough questions correctly they are asked if they want to move up to the harder level or stay at the same level.

A Magical Guide to Avoiding Plagiarism is an infographic guide created by Kate Hart. The guide was published back in June, but I just learned about it yesterday through one of Jenny Luca's Tweets. A Magical Guide to Avoiding Plagiarism uses a Harry Potter theme to succinctly explain to students when and why they need to properly cite the sources of their information. I've embedded the infographic below, but I encourage you to visit Kate Hart's blog post about it as she goes into more depth on the topic of plagiarism.

Applications for EducationA Magical Guide to Avoiding Plagiarism could be a great graphic to print and post in your school's library and or in your classroom. While the infographic doesn't go into the details of how to cite sources, it does provide students with good reminders of when they need to cite the sources of their information. Click here for eight more resources for preventing and detecting plagiarism.